Evening Star Newspaper, September 23, 1928, Page 56

[ 1979 AUTO LICENSE TAGS INNEW HUES Thirty-Nine States to Change Color Combination—Dis- trict Scheme Outlined. SEES AUTOMOBILES AS MAIN METHOD OF TRANSPORTATION Psychologist Stresses Menace to Life in Reckless Driving With 20,000,000 Motor Cars Operating Daily in U. S. BY ALAN MACDONALD. With 20,000,000 automobiles now rushing about the streets and high- ways of the United States, and 85 of Thirty-nine ‘States will change the color combination for automobile license | platés in 1920 and 23 different motifs | will be used. according to a survey by | the American Motor'st, official publi- | cation of the American Automobile | Association. | There is a decided trend toward | darker colors, it is revealed. and the *brunette” in license plates has gained 2 small lead over the ‘“blonde.” Although varied hues will be repre- gented in the color schemes. nine States and the District of Columbia will retain the past vear's color combinations, re- versing them as to background and let- tering. Scheme to Predominate, No single color motif can be said to prevail, although six States and the District of Columbia will use yellow letters and numerals cn a black back- ground. This color scheme will there- fore predominate in 1929, taking rank over the black-on-white motif, which was used in five States in 192 Second honors will go to the orange- on-black combination, which will be used in five States, as compared to four this year, says the A. A. A. publication Four States will use a combination of white on black and the same number have adopted white on green. Betwixt and between will be found the color schemes of sister States, with Tulodian red on cream yellow, black on aluminum and a variety of other hues represented in the identification of the units in the Nation's transporta- tion system on rubber tires. Colors for Passenger Cars. Following are the 1929 colors for passenger cars for all of the States: Color scheme. Federal yellow on black. White on_maroon. Gray on dark blu Deep vellow on du Orange on dark b Qrange on blacl Qrange on gloss black. Red on black. IBlack on orange Black on dark ereen. Black on_canary veliow. White on West'n Union blue. w on_black. ¥ White on dark blue White on dark green White on marine blue. Yellow on black. White-on black hite on maroon, White on black Black on white. White on black Black on orange. Dark white. ed. e ull black. lue. Indiana '\ owa .. Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachuse! Michigan Minnerota Mississippi Missouri Montana braska sreen on k Dark blue on old gold. Chrome yelloy on black. White on dark gray. Tylodian red on cream yel- ow. Black on vello w. White on ‘blue. h Cari North Dakota Ohio .. Oklahoma 53] Rhode Tsland South Carolin South Dakota. Tennessee Black on orange, ‘White on green. Virginia ‘Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming .. BRAZIL IS BUILDING NEW HIGHWAY LINKS Capital and Sao Paulo Now Con- nected and 60-Mile Stretch in Pana Being Constructed. Paraphrasing an expression that was popular_in the United States genera- tions ago;-we have: “Southward the course of highways takes its way.” A short time ago, ‘we noted the comple- tion of 300 miles of.motor road, con- necting the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Now, the Pan-Amer- ican Union records the completion of a modern highway southward from Sao Paulo almost to the border of the adjoining State of Parana, a distance of about 230 miles. From the border of the State of Parana to the capital city, Curityba, the distance via the proposed highway Toute is approximately 60 miles. Re- cently a sum of $240,000 was made available by the State government for constructing this link. Work is now progressing, and when finished there will be a_ continuous motor highway from the Brazilian capital through the State of Sao Paulo to the capital of the State of Parana. There are also highways extending from Rio de Ja- neiro via Petropolis, farther north- ward. The journey between the cities of Sao Paulo and Curityba by railroad re- quires about 36 hours. When the 60 miles of highway are finished the motor car route will be much shorter than the railroad, and the time of transit may be cut to a third or a fourth of the rail trip. —_— ‘The colors of Florida's 1929 motor vehicle license tags will be orange and blue in compliment to the University of Florida. Buses have to operate on schedule and we make sure of depend- able service by using Champion Spark Plugs. Champion is the better spark plug because it has an exclusive silli- manite insulator spe- cially treated to with. stand the much higher temperatures of the modern high-compres- sion engine. Alsoanew patented solid copper gasket-seal that remains absolutely gas-tight un- der high compression. Special analysis elec trodes which assure a fixed spark-gap under all driving conditions. CHAMPIO Spark Plugs Toledo, Ohio Dependable for Every Engine e e e the most efficient factories in the world every day turning out additional thou- sands, the motor car has become not only America’s main means of trans- portation, but also the Nation's greatest menace to life and limb. If you are inclined to impugn the latter general- ization as a Heflinade, you have only to consult the record. Last year 20,.- 891 persons were killed by automobiles and nearly 800,000 sent to sick bed or hospital. Since 1921 more than 3.500,- 000 have been injured -and above 100,000 slain. “No sane man, all things considered, can understand why we go on putting these powerful, highly perfected poten- tial killers into the hands of ewery one, regardless of the prospective driver's disposition, health, mental condition or even sanity.” Dr. V. V. Andrews, noted psychologist and psychiatrist of New York, who for many years has de- voted his major effort to studying driv- ers and applicants for drivers’ jobs in the employ of great corporations. “Jams and Crashes” Cited. “The cause of motor car accidents is pretty well established. The fault is not with the cars, or the rules of the road. or the signals and traffic officers—it is with the individuals who drive them into jams and crashes. My experience shows that accidents do not distribute themselves impartially over any given number of drivers. Half of them occur to less than one-third of the operators, In other words, in any such group accidents will happen repeatedly to certain persons, and not at all to others, The apparent fact is that some persons are born with the mental and nervous equipment to be good drivers, and others are simi- larly predisposed—though they may be good enough otherwise—to be dan- generous drivers. And most of the latter class never know of the truth about themselves until tragedy stalks out on the road and holds up its grim, re- lentless hand.” Startling as the doctor's views may seem, they become all the more so when considered in the light of sta- tistics as to the proportion of persons who have, in one degree or another, some tendency toward mental break- down. Year in, year out, the record shows, about 75,000 persons annually are committed to institutions for treat- ment of mental afflictions, either per- manently. or temporarily. The experi- ence of psychiatrists in general leads them to the conviction that for every one of these there are in the total population at any given time at least 10 who are similarly, but in a lesser degree, affected. IMPORTANT Twin-Ignition motor 12 Aircraft type spark plugs High compression New double drop frame S P WA | ! | THE SUNDAY. STAR, WASHINGTON, rD.i Us; SEPTEMBER . 23.u 1928<PART 4. ‘This means, then, that there are at all times in the United States some- where in the neighborhood of 750,000 persons, who, under extraordinary stress or crisis, may suddenly blow up, and become insane, or at least temporarily not responsible for their actions. Be-| yond doubt, the majority of sudden killings which the newspapers are forced | to record are the result of this condi- tion. Under the easy laws for the is-| suance of automobile licenses, it is cer- | tain that numbers of these unstable personalities, as the psychiatrists call| them, obtain licenses to drive cars. In| some States there are still no license laws. In New Jersey alone are appli-| cants required to take written tests on the law and the rules of the road. A in none is it necessary for the pr tive driver to prove himself phy cally or mentally fit before he is given highway rights. Thus, while the ques- tions as to how many accidents, fatal| or otherwise, can honestly be traced to| our unstable personalities cannot be definitely answered, it is certain that the number is by no means small, to say the least. Eliminates Another Class. But Dr. Andrews gocs a step further. He points out that in addition to the unstable personality as a cause of auto- mobile accidents, there are many per- fectly normal. successful, entirely sane A SELF-MADE TREEBOX ‘What is liable to happen when a sensory type at the wheel is nagged by an inferiority complex on the back seat. persons who should not be permitted to drive motor cars under present-day conditions. “Broadly speaking, people fall into two general classifications,” says the doctor. “They are either of the motor or the sensory type. The motor type is set, so to speak, for whatever emer- gency may arise. His to danger, or need of sudden action, is very small, Driving his car, he comes to a situation at a crossroads where he must, if he is to avoid acci- dent, do something instantly. There are, say, three or four possible things— put on the brakes, speed the car through a traffic opening, steer off the road near the edge of a ditch, or do some other hazardous thing dic- tated by a peculiar condition. Your motor type driver acts without thought, seemingly, and does the right thing. His mind and nerves are such that he calmly, instanly reacts correctly. Every one knows such drivers, Driver Who Is Slow in Acting. “On_the other hand, the sensory type, faced by just such a situation, is in quite a different dilemma. He may remain perfectly calm and not go to pleces. But by the very struc- ture of his mind, he must figure the thing out before he acts. When he comes into the jam, he does the per- fectly sane thing of trying to look reaction time | ¥ telligences. men who are now eminent educators, both highly professors. I put a metronome, ment which waves an upright rod regu- larly back and forth at any desired speed, within its own limitations. over the whole field, weighing the pos- sibilities and selecting the best chance to safety. been the basis of his success in life. But in the case of auto driving the process takes too long. sor: ‘This very quality may have Before the sen- type driver is able to decide by this slow process the crash has oc- curred and he may be dead. are born chauffeurs, and they are, as a rule, better motor car men than the best' professor or executive. of course, but as & rule sensory type, in an efficiently controlled community, would be restricted to driv- ing 10 or 15 miles an hour and con- fined to 1 There Not always, People of the s traveled roads. “I always recall in this connection an experiment I conducted years ago at just Harvard. It was to demonstrate this classification of human in- I had as subjects two esteemed as university On the table before them a little instru- Professors Put to Test. “The two future professors were told to make over and over again, in time with the metronome, a series of four figures—square, triangle, circle and a €ros ‘With pencil and paper, they started I increased gradually the speed of the metronome. One continued right up to the last speed to make the figures perfectly. The figures of the other became more and more indis- tinct and confused, until at the last he was merely making a lot of ragged, twisting lines, like a skein of yarn. The first, you see, was of the motor type I mentioned above, and the second of the sensory typé. He simply couldn't, the second subject, think fast enough to keep up with the metronome, any more than he could with the rapidly changing conditions on a highway in- fested with modern high-powered motor cars.” But there are other types of accident makers among automobile drivers. Dr, Andrews tells of them in speaking of his work for a corporation which em- ploys hundreds of drivers in its de- livery service. His job was to devise tests for weeding out the accident mak- ers. He met with a high degree of suc- cess. He found many normally able, pleasant fellows who just couldn’t drive cars. “We had many natural accident breeders in the beginning,” he says, “But we haven't now. There was the day-dreaming type, whose mind was nannenay 111 m | continually straying from his task of driving. There was the fellow who was forever mulling over, as he drove, things that had happened to him, perhaps a quarrel with his wife that morning, or a run-in with the boss, or his per- sonal troubles with sickness and bill collectors. Both types were usually in- dulging in their pet mental distraction when their cars crashed into other cars or persons. Curiously enough, the back-seat rider can be of as much danger to the com- munity as the unstable personality at the wheel of a car. Psychopathic fears on the part of the back-seater, of course, are a source of distraction to any driver. Also, our old friend the inferiority complex, by causing a pas- senger, wife or relative, to nag a driver, plays its part. Back-Seat Passenger Exonerated. But the back-seat passenger some- times is not at all to blame. Quite pos- sibly, according to psychiatrists, a per- fectly sane, sensible old lady, riding with an unstable personality, who, be- cause of his mental condition is prone to speeding and taking chances, might be entirely right in her protests. And until the unstable personality drove her into a jam, she might be regatded, by him, at least, as crazy. Europeans Term All Closed Cars I “Saloon Models” ‘To differentiate between closed and open models, the word saloon s used abroad for the former makes, which includes all sedans and coaches. Whether that name could be brought to this country to apply to closed cars is a subject for discus- sion for the framers of the eight~ eenth amendment. ‘The reason for the European ap- pellation is not known. HOOVER PROMISES 1S HIGHWAY AID (Will Favor Continuance of Program If Elected, Nominee Says. Assurances that if elected he would pledge his support for a continuance | of the $75,000,000 Federal highway aid program of the United States Govern- ment were given by Herbert Hoover, presidential nominee. The pledge was given to a delegation of representatives of the American Mo- torists’ Association, headed by J. Bor- ton Weeks, president of that organiza- tion and also head of the Keystone Automobile Club of Philadelphia. Federal aid, Mr. Hoover declared, was of prime importance in the completion of the interstate highway systems of the States and has been indorsed by him many times. He expressed a be- lief that the so-called 7 per cent sys- tem, comprising some 180,000 miles of interstate highways, should be com- pleted before the Federal Government attempts to improve the secondary highway systems of the United States. Speaking for the quarter of a million motorists in his organization, President | | that it favored an expansion for the present Federal aid program, and de- clared that, in addition to this, there is a growing need for the beginning of a program for secondary highways as an aid to the farmers. A similar expression was voiced by the National Rural Letter Carriers’ As- sociation. Ned H. Goodell, president of the association, declared. in speak- ing for 44,000 rural letter carriers, it was their belief that improvement of secondary highways of the country was the outstanding need of the farmers, thus giving to them a highway over which they could reach a consuming market. Weeks told the presidential nominee | NEW RECORD SEEN - INMOTOR QUTPUT August Production of Cars and Trucks Near 485,000 Units, Is Report. With August output for cars and trucks varlously estimated at between 450,000 and 485,000 units, it appears certain that a new output record was established last month, according to B. H. Cram, president of Cram's Auto- motive Reports, Inc. Furthermore, it | is of extreme importance to know that schedules for the current month show | but a slight decline from those of the month previous, while compared to this period last vear, output shows an increase of about 60 per cent. With operations in most plants hold- ing up well, it is believed that tenta- tive schedules for September will be approximated, although there is some possibility that slight curtailment, now being effected by one or two of the large volume manufacturers, may be materially increasel toward the end of the month, although the general belief is that curtailment will not be sharp | until after October 1. The retail sales situation 1s extraors dinarily good, with a strong demand for all classes of cars in every section of the country. The current survey shows that in" 35 reporting cities new car sales are good in 23, as compared with good sales in 25 two weeks ago. Twelve centers show fair sales cur- rently as against nine in the previous report. At the present time the trend is improving in 11 cities, ic downward in 13, and remains unchanged in 11 others. New car stocks are normal in 22 cities with the trend toward slightly increas- ing stocks. Repossessions ra - tween low and normal with the weighi of the trend downward, reflecting a healthy buying condition generally. How to Increase Mileage. A sure way to increase tire mileage is to have the wheel alignment inspect-~ ed at least twice a year. A car may steer fairly well. even with the wheels distinctly out of alignment, but the punishment on the tires, the enormously increased wear and tear, and the ex- pense for replacement,” are serious. Axles, steering mechanism, and brakes all have a direct effect, also. on tire wear, if not in proper adjustment. When having the wheel alignment in- spected, it is apt to save money if these other items are also inspected at the same time. Watch Timing Change. A new timing chain should be in- spected and adjusted after the first 700 miles of service on any car where auto- matic take-up is no provided. | # Art Goebel won the Dole Race from San Franciscoto Hawaii, ,then he hung up 2 néw record for a Coastto Coast continuous flight, with a twin igni- tion, high compression, valve-in-hesd motor. And then he bought s new Nash “400,” to get the same kind of performance from his motor car: Special Six Sedan SI3AH 1o tactor rully equipped lt was a Twin-Ignition Motor that carried Lindbergh over the Atlantic, Goebel * over the Pacific, Byrd over the Pole ! And all three principles are combined in the great new Nash Twin Ignition Motor which powers all Nash «400” Special and Advanced Six models. In history-making flights Lindbergh, Byrd, Goebel#* and a host of others dramatically and conclusively the superiority and reliability of twin ignition, high com- pression, valve-in-head motor performance. These three great principles of motor con- struction provided extra reliability, super- power and extreme economy of gasoline consumption |in the motors their ships. “400" Aluminum alloy p! 7-bearing cranksh: FEATURES- Lovejoy shock absorbers {exclusive Nash mounting} One-piece Salon fenders have established which powered The Nash Twin Ignition Motor, with two ignition coils instead of one, two spark plugs (airplane type) to each cylinder instead of one, 360 sparks a second instead of 180, at top speed, burns the highly compressed gases more thoroughly and economically. istons {Inver Struts} aft fhollow crank pins} 1709 L St. N.W. in 1309, Hall-Ker: 151 B Wallace Motor Company Distributors—Retail Sales Rooms Nash Motor Co: h Street. e 1ith N.W. T_Motor Com| Street S.E. Decatur 2280 Rinker Motor 119 Trving_ Stree sh Mot Ignition Motor. you are. certain never to be contented with the performance of older types of motors. NASH 400 Leads the World in Motor Car Value Salon Bodies Vanity case and sm Company t N.W. from frame Short turning radius oking 116-inch wheelbase set, leather mou:ned Body, rubber insulated and rear bumpers The result is more power from less gasoline, and ordinary gasoline at that. No special, high priced fuels are required for the Twin Nash Twin Ignition performance is notice- ably different and far finer than anything you ever have experienced. Once you drive the great new Nash «400,” =NO OTHER CAR HAS THEM ALL Nash Special Design front